Blind people feel their own heartbeat better than sighted people. This is the most important conclusion of a study carried out by scientists from the Jagiellonian University in Poland and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. This is proof of the unique plasticity of the human brain.
– During the experiment, we wanted to test the ability of the subjects to feel their own heartbeat, counting its beats. Thus, we decided to test whether blind people feel their body better,” explains Dominika Radziun, Master of Arts, first author of the publication and graduate of the Institute of Psychology at the Jagiellonian University.
Counting heart rate - who did it better?
In a publication published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General scientists described the results of an experiment in which sighted and blind people took part. Tested on 36 blind and 36 sighted volunteers.
According to the Jagiellonian University in a report about the experiment, the subjects were told to focus only on the sensation of their heartbeat, and they could not check their pulse manually. The task was simple - to count the beats of their own heart in several short periods, the duration of which the subjects did not know. The researchers then asked for the number of beats, which they compared with the actual recorded heart rate. Participants were also asked to rate, on a scale of 0 to 10, how well they thought they did on the task.
What does the experiment say about the human brain?
“The study showed that blind people feel the heartbeat more accurately than sighted people,” says Radzyun, M.A. As the researchers emphasize, this simple study has important implications - it suggests that the unusual ability observed in blind people probably reflects their greater sensitivity to signals from within the body.
“Our results are an important step in the study of brain plasticity and show that in the blind, not only hearing and touch are aggravated, as we know from previous studies, but also access to signals from inside the body. This, in turn, allows us to better understand how blind people perceive their emotions in the absence of visual information, - adds co-author of the article, prof. Marcin Shved, whose laboratory is involved in the research.
The study described is part of a larger research project between two groups dealing with body perception (Karolinska Institute) and brain plasticity (SzwedLab at the Jagiellonian University Institute of Psychology). Several experiments dealt with an almost unexplored topic: how blind people perceive their own body.
Source: Wprost
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